Easily being the most pretentious band in modern day's music, GYBE! have succeeded again in making an album beyond comparison. Four long compositions (around 22 minutes each), almost suites, divided over two pieces of black vinyl or silver plastic. Each composition is built out of epic instrumentals, disturbing ambient soundscapes, field recordings and manipulated spoken words. It's the same concept as on its amazing predecessors 'F#A#(infinity)' and 'Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada', and the end products are not for the weak-hearted. The first piece, 'Storm', is the first GYBE! piece that contains a somewhat uplifting atmosphere. Their work is known for their enormous melancholic melodies and almost depressing atmospheres (The members of GYBE! are not really satisfied or happy with the state our world is in), but 'Storm' begins with a melody that is almost hopeful. Almost, because later on in this piece it becomes clear that the hope you gathered by listening to it is not nearly enough to hold off the end of the world that is predicted from the last eight minutes of 'Storm' on to the last fading sounds of 'Antennas to Heaven', the last piece. And they predict this almost entirely instrumentally, but it's impossible not to believe them. Stronger than the rage combined by all of the angry political punk bands in the world, GYBE! sketches a world wherein pain, paranoia, disbelief, anger, and - most of all - the fact that in the end it all will be useless, go hand in hand. And there is no choice than to suffer with them, weep with them, shout with them. No escape. It's amazing that people can create such feelings only with music, without words. By the time you arrive onto the third piece, especially '3rd Part', all you can do is sit down, relax, listen, and cry. Such melancholy... The way all instruments (drums, glockenspiel, three guitars, violin, cello, two basses) complete each other is astonishing and disturbing at the same time, because you feel it has to be impossible to ever top this again. Or can they? With each listening there are other parts that grasp your attention, and there's just no holding back. They may be pretentious, they consider their music as art, and they never will let something come between them and their music. Well, let them be pretentious, because they don't create just music. It is art.
